More pixels are always better than less pixels, right? Meet DUO, a second screen for your laptop, by Mobile Pixels. Their Kickstarter campaign is extremely sucessful, maybe because their product is extremely useful. let’s check it out!
Sitting in front of a giant workstation with a host of monitors will boost your productivity, no doubt. But many freelancers (have to) work quite a bit while on the road, with only their laptop handy. Does this diminish productivity, then? Not if you choose to back the so-called DUO screen by Mobile Pixels on Kickstarter.
DUO – Dual-Screen Laptop Monitor
What I normally do if I’m on-the-go and I need to work on my laptop (especially video editing, since these NLEs tend to eat up a lot of screen real estate) is to take my iPad with me, too. Because as always, there’s an app for that: Duet (link). With it, your iPad becomes a second screen for your Macbook. But now there’s a new kid in town, and it plays with both Macs and Windows laptops: DUO. Check out the Kickstarter video below for an overview:
The idea seems to be pretty simple, indeed. DUO is a foldable second screen for any laptop. Just attach it to the back of your existing one and slide it out once you need some additional pixels. DUO connects via a single USB-C cable to the host computer and the two founders of Mobile Pixels claim that it won’t drain your laptop’s battery too much.
Features
The whole unit weights 1.5 lbs and features a 12.5″ IPS screen. That way it will fit almost any laptop, no matter of the original screen size of that given laptop. The panel itself offers 300 nits and a resolution of 1080p which is fine for all kinds of office tasks as well as some non-critical video or photo work. For finishing a major project one should sit at that aforementioned giant workstation, I guess. The DUO screen folds out of a plastic hard cover and it can be swiveled by 270°. You can even rotate it around by 180° in order to present the content of your screen to your client/co-worker/friend. You can attach DUO to your laptop so that the screen folds out on either the right hand side or on the left hand side of your laptop monitor.
The screen works with a custom driver, which is available for macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux. This driver converts the USB signal to eDP (Display Port), therefore only one USB connection is needed for both power and the video signal itself. The whole product is pretty straight forward. It’s affordable (179$), it’s super simple to use, you can easily swap this foldable screen from one laptop to another. DUO can be set to “expand” in order to extend your screen or to “mirror” in order to copy the content of your laptop screen to this second screen.
Pricing and Availability
The Kickstarter campaign runs until July 24th and by the time of writing this article 2.286 backers funded a total of $450.207 (1286% funded). One DUO is $179 (early bird) or $189 (regualr price during the Kickstarter campaign). With one DUO you’ll get two sets of magnets and an optional stand for placing DUO directly on a table for an additional $15.
If everything goes smoothly, the first DUO should be shipping your way in January 2019 and if something goes wrong.. well.. this is still a Kickstarter campaing, not an online shop.
DUO seems to be a kind of simple, yet very neat product which has some potential of increasing your productivity without adding too much bulk to your laptop and without being crazy expensive. Well done!
Links: Kickstarter campaign | mobilepixels.com
Would you back such a product? Let us know in the comments below!

A year ago, after a successful Kickstarter campaign the first GNARBOXes arrived, and now, 12 months later, the GNARBOX 2.0 SSD hits Kickstarter. Based on user feedback and new in almost every way.
In order to bring you up to speed with the GNARBOX 2.0, please make sure to read our initial coverage of the original version of this versatile backup solution. No laptop or phone are required in order to backup like a champ, although with this version 2.0 a smartphone or tablet is strongly recommended.
GNARBOX 2.0
The original GNARBOX (please forgive the capital letters… I didn’t came up with that name) was very successful on Kickstarter. But the guys behind it had some troubles once the campaign was over. The creators put it like this:
If you were a part of the Kickstarter for GNARBOX 1.0, you know that we encountered significant delays in the design and manufacturing process. The longest delay was a result of our change in the box’s CPU. Over the last 9 months, we’ve vetted possible CPU’s and architectures, ultimately selecting one that meets all of our requirements. We have a clear path to market after working with Intel over the past 3 years, and expect no delays.
So that’s good. And without further ado, let us dive into the features and improvements of the brand-new GNARBOX 2.0:
At its core it’s still a portable and very versatile, bespoke backup device. It comes in different capacities (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB) and will let you backup your valuable footage with ease – and without the need to bring a dedicated laptop for that job. It offers checksum verification and in contrast to the original version it sports an OLED screen. To me, a visual feedback on what’s going on is a very welcomed feature.
The GNARBOX 2.0 creates an ad-hoc wifi network to which you can connect with your smartphone or tablet. It also offers two USB-C connectors, a SD card reader & a micro HDMI port. The replaceable (!) Li-Ion battery is rated 3200mAh / 7.4v which lasts for about 5 hours of backuping or 3 hours worth of editing. Editing? Yes, we’ll come to that.
The unit itself is rated IP76 which means it’s protected from dust and capable of withstanding water immersion between 15 cm and 1 meter for 30 minutes. A rugged device is a good device when you’re working in the field – and that’s exactly what the GNARBOX 2.0 is made for.
The built-in SD card reader transfers your files at 75 MB/s while any card reader fast enough transfers your footage at 450 MB/s via USB-C.
The unit itself is driven by a 2.40 GHz Intel Quad Core CPU and a 4-core Intel HD Graphics GPU. 802.11 ac/b/g/n wifi ensures swift connections over the air.
Different Apps for Different Jobs
The GNARBOX 2.0 is more than one device. Depending on your given job it can adapt to that workflow. The most basic task doesn’t need an app, though: Back up your footage with just the press of a button, complete with checksum verification and visual feedback.
For all other, more fancy, workflows: there’s an app for that:
Safekeep: With safekeep you can move files across cards, your GNARBOX, hard drives and RAIDs in an easy-to-use interface. Organize your files and folders, rename them or automatically sync them to Dropbox once you have internet access via wifi once you’re back in civilization. The idea here is that you don’t need to bring a laptop but your footage is ready when your home to start working right away.
Selects: This one is for photographers. You can quickly preview RAW images while still in the field. This app also provides tools for a quick and basic color correction. A 5-star rating can be applied for pre-selecting good shots.
Sequences: Video guys should take a closer look at this app. After offloading your footage to the GNARBOX 2.0, you can review high resolution footage and render into editing formats such as ProRes. Trimming clips, organizeing shots into bins and throwing together a rough-cut is also possible. Once your done you can export any sequence created in the field to Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro via XML. Again, no laptop needed here but once you’re back home you can start working on that rough-cut straight away.
Showcase: This app is not really meant to be used in the field but once you’re near a giant LCD screen, it could be very handy. This app lets you view your photos or videos on any monitor or television using the microHDMI port. Using your phone or tablet connected to the GNARBOX 2.0 via ad-hoc wifi, it’s easy to navigate the files using thumbnail collections. All files play back in real time.
Watch this video for a full 27-minute rundown of all the features of the new GNARBOX 2.0:
It is a very versatile little box, indeed. One of the best things is the user-replacable Li-Ion battery which ensures uptime when you need it. Neat!
Pricing and Availability
I can’t stress this enough: Kickstarter is not a marketplace. It is a place where you can invest into future products which you’ll get at a discounted price in return. These products might or might not see the light of day. Since the guys behind the GNARBOX 2.0 have done it before and they most likely have learned a lot during their original campaign, chances are pretty good to see the GNARBOX 2.0 by the end of 2018.
Kickstarter timeline
The GNARBOX 2.0 comes in 4 different cpacities which sell (as in: invest) for $299 (128GB), $379 (256GB), $449 (512GB) and $699 (1TB). Each model comes with a spare Li-Ion battery, a wall charger and a charging cable.
The campaing still runs until June 2nd and it’s already funded by over 800%.
Links: Kickstarter.com
What do you think? Is this the device you want to use when you’re working in the field and don’t want to bring your laptop? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Tenba has expanded its Cooper bag collection. The bags-that-don’t-look-like-camera-bags lineup has expanded with two new backpacks, a smaller over the shoulder plus a slimmer 15” laptop shoulder bag.
Tenba bill their Cooper line as a collection of luxury – fine materials including leather accents and trim are used to construct them.
It seems something of a right of passage for all bag manufacturers – functional bags with more focus on stylish aesthetics; we did a whole article on the very subject back in November 2016.
The Tenba Cooper line originally existed as a select few different-sized shoulder bags.
The newly announced products are a more compact shoulder bag, a slim 15” laptop compatible shoulder bag and two backpacks.
The Cooper 6 is now the smallest in line – it’s designed for mirrorless/rangefinder cameras with 2-3 lenses. Designed primarily for stills but really compact video systems could work with this.
Like all the Cooper shoulder bags the Copper 6 features the prominent front designer zip.
The Cooper 15 Slim is self explanatory – a slimmer version of the Copper 15.
“An exterior built with military-grade CORDURA® canvas and waterproof leather delivers serious protection. CORDURA® canvas blends INVISTA nylon fibers with cotton to achieve an abrasion resistance four times greater than 100% cotton canvas. This gives the bags a long-term, allweather durability that is critically important to photographers and filmmakers. Hand-riveted leather zipper pulls add a distinctive touch.”
Perhaps more importantly is announcement of the Cooper Slim Backpack and Cooper DSLR Backpack.
The difference between the two is size – the Cooper Slim is designed for mirrorless/compact DSLR systems with 2-3 lenses. The Cooper DSLR Backpack is 20-30% bigger.
Other than that the feature list is very much like for like.
Both Backpacks are a split design – compartment at the bottom with dividers for camera kit plus a personal compartment at the top for everything else.
The top compartment has the aforementioned Cooper designer zip; the bottom compartment is a single leather-look piece, overall contributing to quite a stylish look.
What’s nice about the camera compartment (as with many Tenba bags) is that the dividers are removable, meaning in seconds you can take out your entire camera section to place in another bag, or make room for something else.
The top compartment has built-in top access pockets, great for small accessories (pens, glasses, phone etc.); there is also space on both models for a 10” tablet.
Specifications on all 4 new Tenba Cooper bags:
Cooper 6
Weight: 1.1 lbs(0.5 kg)
Exterior Dimensions: 9.75W X 6.5H X 4.5D in. (25 X 17 X 11 cm)
Interior Dimensions: 9W X 5.5H X 4D in. (23 X 14 X 10 cm)
Cooper 15 Slim
Weight: 3.5 lbs(1.6 kg)
Exterior Dimensions: 16W X 11.5H X 5.5D in. (41 X 29 X 14 cm)
Interior Dimensions: 15W X 11H X 4D in. (38 X 28 X 10 cm)
Fits a laptop up to 15 inches
Cooper Slim Backpack
Weight:2.4 lbs(1.1 kg)
Exterior Dimensions: 10.5W X 17H X 5D in. (27 X 43 X 13 cm)
Interior Dimensions: 9W X 5.5H X 4D in. (23 X 14 X 10 cm)
Laptop Compartment: 10W X 8.5H X 0.25D in. (25W X 22H X 1D cm)
Fits iPad or similar tablet up to 10 inches
Cooper DSLR Backpack
Weight: 3 lbs(1.4 kg)
Exterior Dimensions: 11,5W X 19H X 6D in. (29 X 48 X 15 cm)
Interior Dimensions: 10.5W X 8.5H X 4.5D in. (27 X 22 X 11 cm)
Laptop Compartment: 10W X 10H X 0.25D in. (25W X 25H X 1D cm)
Fits iPad or similar tablet up to 10 inches
All these products are ready to ship, prices below.

ASUS has just unveiled its most powerful laptop yet. The ASUS ROG G703 is designed for the heavy duty users that need uncompromising performance for challenging tasks.
ASUS has just introduced a new, powerful laptop to the PC gaming crowd. This “beast” packs seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processors, a 17.3-inch screen with a maximum resolution of 3,840 x 2,160, up to 64GB of DDR4 system memory, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. For storage, it’s equipped with two 256GB M.2 NVMe solid-state drives in RAID 0 and a 1TB 5400 rpm Seagate hybrid hard drive.
Take a look at the in-depth introduction video below from OC3D TV.
This laptop is solid, built like a tank and is equipped with patented Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) system which enables it to clean itself of harmful dust and particles.
Anti-Dust Cooling System
Another very cool feature of this monstrous laptop is the exclusive Aura RGB lighting technology, which allows the user to customise the back light colour of each individual key.
Individual Key Backlighting
The ASUS ROG G703 has clearly been designed with gamers in mind – it does, after all, fit into the ASUS Republic of Gamers family. But if it’s good enough for gamers, could it also be suitable for filmmakers?
As an independent filmmaker, I find myself doing my post-production tasks on my MacBook Pro running four heavy programs at once: FCPX as my editing weapon of choice, Premiere for stabilization purposes, DaVinci Resolve for grading and Logic Pro X for sounds and music composition. I must say that my MacBook Pro deals with all of that bravely, but can sometimes lag a bit due to this exceptional burden.
There is no doubt that the filmmaking and post community needs a “super laptop” that can take care of our computing demands in the field. In addition to the beefy specs of the ASUS ROG G703 such as both an internal RAID configuration and a hybrid drive, a robust graphics card and large maximum RAM, this laptop also offers other features that could greatly benefit filmmakers. The anti-dust system, for example, could prove useful when shooting in harsh conditions, and the customisable keyboard backlight makes it ideal to up your keyboard shortcut game.
Pricing
This could be the real Achilles heel of the ASUS ROG G703, as this laptop costs $3,499 – an extremely high price point for a laptop.
What do you think? Could the ASUS ROG G703 be the solution to portable DIT, editing, rendering and grading? Tell us in the comments!

At this year’s CES, Razer Inc. unveiled Project Valerie, a concept laptop that contains three self-unfolding 4K screens complete with all the horsepower needed to drive the resulting heap of pixels.
Razer Project Valerie
What is the definition of a professional-grade laptop? Is tagging a Pro label at the end of the model name sufficient? What about not just one, but three 17″ 4K screens, for a total of 11.520 x 2.160 pixels? Razer’s Project Valerie is exactly that. Although still a prototype, this beast seems to be capable of some serious GPU work. Have a look at the teaser from Razer below to get the idea:
The whole thing is based on the existing Razer Blade range of laptops. Yes, the main focus of their products is gaming applications, but the one thing that gaming, video editing and especially color grading have in common is the need for high-end GPU performance. The Project Valerie device has the potential of making all three types of users happy.
The machine is fuelled by a top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card with 8GB RAM, accompanied by an Intel Core i7 Skylake CPU and 32GB RAM as a foundation. It seems to be all about graphics power, and since Razer has a reputation of building high end gaming laptops, Project Valerie is certainly no exception.
self-unfolding and self-aligning screens.
Since these two extra 17″ 4K displays need some extra space, the unit is somewhat thick in comparison to the paper-thin laptops of today and is not exactly lightweight either. But for what it is, it’s pretty impressive.
Maybe we’re witnessing the appearance of a mobile DaVinci Resolve workstation without the need for any extra screens, and from that perspective, it’s pretty compact indeed! As a party trick, the outrigger screens have fancy LED underlighting. Not really necessary, but this is a because-we-can prototype, so who am I to blame Razer?
Since it’s a Windows machine, Mac users won’t be invited to the party. But then again: DaVinci Resolve is available for both, Windows and Mac OS and so is Adobe Premiere CC.
Pricing and Availability
No word on pricing, yet. No word on availability, either. And since it’s a prototype we’re speaking of, the Project Valerie could remain a sweet dream forever. If it does become available, it won’t be cheap, that’s for sure. The existing Razer Blade Pro, which is the base system for Project Valerie, is $3,999.
Read all about it: Razorzone.com

Here’s a neat little product for laptop users. The Basepro is an all-in-one laptop stand, USB 3.0 hub and external hard drive. Check out their IndieGoGo campaign.
The philosophy of the breakout station to add peripherals to your laptop is becoming fairly common. With laptop specs on the rise and competency versus a desktop system growing, it’s only natural that more are turning to the more portable solution.
As a sole laptop user myself, maxing out my ports with an abundance of external drives, hubs and cables is a very common affair.
The Basepro looks to simplify your workflow by adding a USB 3.0 hub and USB 3.0 external hard drive into a laptop stand.
Whilst the aesthetics of the stand on its own won’t win any design awards, once a MacBook is mounted it appears consistent with Apples design; leaving space at the back to allow heat to disperse is a nice touch.
The Basepro offers a type B USB 3.0 port on one side connecting to an external bus-powered hard drive. The stand can support up to 4TB capacity hard drives, and you can decide whether the Basepro ships with a drive or is empty to insert your own.
On the opposite side of the Basepro is a 4-port USB 3.0 hub, which is great for plugging in accessories such as a mouse, keyboard, USB stick etc.
As the Basepro dictates the specific positioning of the laptop, the cable geek inside of me thinks that it would therefore be nice to have some custom length, short USB 3.0 cables included, not the horrifyingly (for a cable geek) coiled off-the-shelf examples used in the video.
You’ll get a lot more peripherals out of current Thunderbolt competitors, but will lose the real estate you gain on your desk with the cohesive stand/hub/hard drive design of the Basepro. The starting price is also very affordable, currently $69 without a drive for IndieGoGo backers.

Blackmagic Design announced a new capture device that uses the Apple Thunderbolt Interface.
At 209€ ($300) this external capture card for Macs is a very affordable and strong editing and capturing solution. Blackmagic is proud to bring the first product of its kind that uses the Thunderbolt interface to the market.
As everything else, it’s not compatible with Final Cut Pro X (or is it the other way around?).
It captures 10bit Full HD uncompressed, the ProRes formats or DPX (you’d use the latter to go into Avid, there’s no direct DNxHD for Avid users).
If you own a Thunderbolt laptop like a Macbook Pro you can capture 10bit directly from the hdmi feed of a camera for very little money. The Blackmagic Intensity Extreme will be available in the fourth quarter of 2011 and cost 209€ ($300).
Now all we need is a camera that we can use this device with.
If you need HD-SDI connection you should check out the UltraStudio 3D. As a side effect it will also make you 3D ready. This one will be available shortly and will set you back by $945 (670€). Get it here.
You can now find more info on these devices on the Blackmagic Website.
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